1. A. Olechnowicz, ‘Liberal Anti-Fascism in the 1930s, the Case of Sir Ernest Barker’,Albion 36 (2004), 636–60, particularly the discussion of work by David Renton and Nigel Copsey on pp. 636–60; and idem, ‘Historians and the Study of Anti-Fascism in Britain’, above pp. 1–27.

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2. H. McCarthy, ‘Parties, Voluntary Associations and Democratic Politics in Interwar Britain’,Historical Journal 50 (2007), 891–912.

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3. See e.g. J. Ramsden,The Age of Balfour and Baldwin 1902–1940 (London: Longman, 1976), pp. 345–8; B. Coleman, ‘The Conservative Party and the Frustration of the Extreme Right’, in A. Thorpe (ed.),The Failure of Political Extremism in Inter-War Britain (Exeter University Press, 1989), pp. 49–66; J. Stevenson, ‘Conservatism and the Failure of Fascism in Interwar Britain’, in Martin Blinkhorn (ed.),Fascists and Conservatives (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 264–82.

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4. N. Copsey,Anti-Fascism in Britain (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 3–4, 190–2, in considering the Labour Party, includes in his definition of ‘passive anti-fascism’ the ‘state and the media’ and so Labour lobbying in 1936 for what became the Public Order Act, which he describes as ‘anti-fascist legislation’. The leading elements in the state and media were of course Conservative ministers or Conservative-inclined newspapers, and the Public Order Act had originated (in 1934) with, and was passed by, the National Government.

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5. E.g. R. Thurlow,Fascism in Britain. A History 1918–1985 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), chs 1–2; T. Linehan,British Fascism 1918–39 (Manchester: MUP, 2000), chs 1–2; M. Pugh, ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), chs 1–2; Alan Sykes,The Radical Right in Britain (London: Palgrave, 2004), chs 1–2; and for more particular cases, D. Stone,Responses to Nazism in Britain 1933–1939 (London: Palgrave, 2003), chs 5–6.

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6. Best set out in M. Cowling,The Impact of Labour 1920–1924 (Cambridge: CUP, 1971), andThe Impact of Hitler 1933–1940 (Cambridge: CUP, 1975); E. Green,Ideologies of Conservatism (Oxford: OUP, 2002) rightly emphasises Conservative plurality, though his focus was just on economic ideas and he engaged in a dubious search for a Conservative ‘minimum’, pp. 280–90.

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7. R. Griffiths,Fellow Travellers of the Right (1980; Oxford: OUP edn 1983), esp. pp. 21–7, 40–9, 61–8, 233–9. Bryant has received extensive study, in work by Andrew Roberts, Julia Stapleton, Reba Soffer and Richard Griffiths.

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8. See e.g. D. Jerrold,Georgian Adventure (London: Right Book Club, 1937), for one of their most active journals, theEnglish Review, and its luncheon discussion club: its editor records contacts with prominent politicians as ‘mere formalities’, and its political impact as negligible (pp. 334, 344–5).

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9. Pugh,Blackshirts, p. 5; see also M. Pugh,The Making of Modern British Politics 1867–1939 (Oxford: Blackwell 1982), pp. 279–81; ‘The British Union of Fascists and the Olympia Debate’,Historical Journal 41 (1998), 529–42; and ‘The National Government, the British Union of Fascists and the Olympia Debate’,Historical Research 78 (2005), 253–62.

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10. Cabinet 47(25), 7 Oct. 1925; R. Maguire, ‘“The Fascists … are to be Depended Upon”: The British Government, Fascists and Strike-Breaking during 1925 and 1926’, in N. Copsey and D. Renton (eds),British Fascism, the Labour Movement and the State (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 6–26.

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11. C. Bridge,Holding India to the Empire (London: Oriental UP, 1986), pp. 136–7. A Commons debate on an Indian matter on 13 June attracted far more diehard interest than the Olympia debate on the following day.

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12. Well explained in N. Smart,The National Government 1931–1940 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 102–4.

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13. For Anti-Waste, see Cowling,Impact of Labour, pp. 55–9, 73–5, 120–1, and for the later movements S. Ball,Baldwin and the Conservative Party 1929–31 (London: Yale UP, 1988), ch. 3, pp. 210–12, 222–3.

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14. Grand Council minutes (noting also ‘a good number of letters’), 7 June 1934, MSS Primrose League 7/1, Bodleian Library, Oxford: compare M. Pugh,The Tories and the People 1880–1935 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 191.

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15. National Union executive committee minutes, 14 March 1934, Conservative Party archives NUA 4/1/5, Bodleian Library, Oxford, and for the Lancashire area, see AREA 3/1/2: compare M. Pugh, ‘Lancashire, Cotton and Indian Reform: Conservative Controversies in the 1930s’,Twentieth Century British History 15 (2004), 147–50.

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16. E.g.The Diaries and Letters of Robert Bernays 1932–1939, ed. N. Smart (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1996), p. 87 (32 Oct. 1933);Parliament and Politics: The Headlam Diaries 1923–1935, ed. S. Ball (London: The Historians’ Press, 1992), pp. 292–3 (13 Feb. 1934). For a similar Liberal view, Lothian reported in Butler to Brabourne, 20 June 1934, Brabourne papers F97/20B.

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17. Times, 21 Jan. 1927, and see R. J. B. Bosworth, ‘The British Press, the Conservatives, and Mussolini’,Journal of Contemporary History 5 (1970), 173–80, and Griffiths,Fellow Travellers, pp. 14–15.

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18. P. Murphy,Alan Lennox-Boyd (London: Tauris, 1999), p. 47 and see pp. 42–6. As an admirer of foreign fascisms and advocate of some fascist notions for domestic purposes, Lennox-Boyd is a key example in Pugh,Blackshirts, esp. pp. 9, 58, 146, 148.

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19. S. Haxey,Tory M.P. (London: Victor Gollancz, 1942), pp. 207–9; E. W. D. Tennant,True Account (London: Max Parrish, 1957), p. 194; for pro-Franco numbers and a lower AGF figure (22 MPs and 12 peers), see N. Crowson,Facing Fascism (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 207–9. Though the two peers had been ministers, neither had influence with Conservative leaders after 1935: see I. Kershaw,Making Friends with Hitler (London: Allen Lane, 2004).

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20. G. Bruce Strang, ‘The Spirit of Ulysses? Ideology and British Appeasement in the 1930s’,Diplomacy and Statecraft 19 (2008), 487.

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21. Re-affirmed inibid., 483–93, but evident in all serious studies of ‘appeasement’.

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22. R. Griffiths,Patriotism Perverted (London: Constable, 1998), pp. 145–55, 158–60; R. Thurlow,The Secret State (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 207–8, describes the total membership as ‘miniscule’.

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23. See e.g. P. Ghosh, ‘Gladstone and Peel’, in P. Ghosh and L. Goldman (eds),Politics and Culture in Victorian Britain (Oxford: OUP, 2006), pp. 47, 72–3; R. McKibbin,Ideologies of Class (Oxford: OUP, 1990), pp. 16–23.

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24. For a distinctly hard-headed yet subtle explanation, see Cowling,Impact of Labour, pp. 3–12, and see R. Skidelsky, ‘Great Britain’, in S. J. Woolf,Fascism in Europe (London: Methuen, 1981), p. 276: ‘the instinctive cleverness of political arrangements which got [Britain] through a dangerous decade is astounding’ and ‘the sheerpolitical competence of the … parliamentary system … is remarkable’.

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25. See, variously, Cowling,Impact of Labour, chs 2–3, and R. McKibbin,Classes and Cultures (Oxford: OUP, 1998), pp. 50–8.

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26. P. Williamson,Stanley Baldwin (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), pp. 168–73.

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27. H. Nicolson diary, 15 Feb. 1930, Nicolson papers, Balliol College, Oxford. On ‘crisis’ and Mosley’s activities and connections, see P. Williamson,National Crisis and National Government 1926–1932 (Cambridge: CUP, 1992), ch. 4 (esp. pp. 145–9), pp. 230–1, 276, with further details in M. Worley, ‘What was the New Party? Sir Oswald Mosley and Associated Responses to the “Crisis”, 1931–1932’,History 92 (2007), 39–63, and the symposium on the New Party inContemporary British History 23 (2009), 421–542.

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28. Ibid., pp. 344–5, ch. 11, pp. 433–54, ch. 14 and conclusion. For economic measures see also A. Booth, ‘Britain in the 1930s: A Managed Economy?’,Economic History Review, 2nd s. 40 (1987), 499–522, and for ‘corporative’ proposals, Ritschel,Politics of Planning, ch. 5.

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29. J. Stevenson and C. Cook,The Slump (London: Cape, 1977), ch. 2.

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30. P. Williamson, ‘The Monarchy and Public Values 1910–1953’, in Andrzej Olechnowicz (ed.),The Monarchy and the British Nation 1780–2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 223–57.

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31. J. Lawrence, ‘The Transformation of British Public Politics after the First World War’,Past and Present 190 (2006), 198–201.

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32. T. Jones,A Diary with Letters 1931–1950 (London: OUP, 1954), p. 130 (12 June 1934).

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33. Notes for Conservative Canvassers, Sept. 1933, quoted in C. Bussfeld,Democracy versus Dictatorship (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2005), p. 204, and Conservative PartyElection Notes 1935, pp. 378–85.

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34. For this paragraph see Williamson,Baldwin, pp. 313–35; P. Williamson, ‘Christian Conservatives and the Totalitarian Challenge 1933–40’,English Historical Review 115 (1999), 615–19, and the commentaries on Conservative Party literature and speeches in Bussfeld,Democracy versus Dictatorship, pp. 194–206, 246–71.

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35. Though this did not amount to government ‘control’, as argued in R. Cockett,Twilight of Truth (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989). The various newspapers had their own reasons for wanting to avoid war: see M. Meznar, ‘The British Government, the Newspapers and the German Problem 1937–39’ (Durham PhD thesis, 2005).

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